With dozens of nonfiction books on Joss Whedon’s works from Buffy to Avengers, one critical area has been ignored: Whedon’s comics. In fact, he’s written several series for Marvel and DC, along with independents and the many issues of Angel, Buffy, and Serenity comics for IDW and Dark Horse. While a few isolated essays have tackled Buffy season eight or Whedon’s X-Men run, there is no anthology devoted to only Whedon comics. Now that’s about to change.

Essays on any aspect of Whedon’s comics (as described below) are welcome. The completed essays should be 4000-5000 words. Essays must adhere to MLA format and be friendly and approachable, yet academic in scope and content. New papers or presented conference papers rather than reprints are appreciated. This collection is not yet under contract, but I have several interested publishers who are awaiting a list of essays to be included. McFarland, who publishes most of the Buffy criticism collections, will likely be on board.

Proposal Guidelines: Please send a 350-500 word summary of your proposed essay pasted into your email, along with a short professional bio or cover letter.

Direct inquiries and proposals can be sent to Valerie Estelle Frankel, pop culture author and professor, at valerie at calithwain.com with a subject of WHEDON SUBMISSION.

Essays on both canon and “less official” Whedon comics are welcome, as are comparisons between Whedon comics and other comics or other Whedon works. Discussion of comic conventions from canon to art to gender issues are also appreciated. Other areas, like comparing Whedon’s Avengers movie, Agents of SHIELD, Doctor Horrible, or other shows to comics are also possible. On the shows, Buffy is compared to Spider-Man, Superman and Power Girl, Angel is compared to Batman so much Boreanaz was offered the role, Dark Willow parallels Dark Phoenix, Cordy and Fred are called Wonder Woman, and Xander and Giles are compared to Jimmy Olsen and Alfred…there’s paper material there, too. This anthology welcomes established Whedon scholars as well as enthusiastic new writers.

Which comics are Whedon’s? Canon comics include the following Whedon products (as Whedon wrote or supervised them).

Oh you guys are totally right and I put it up…Joss Whedon didn’t supervise them, his brother did, but the same is true for Dr. Horrible and Leaves on the Wind. Love to get essay submissions from everyone…

McFarland has just accepted the book but I’m afraid they think it’s too fat already—I just can’t squeeze in any more. Thus I must announce that the collection is closed. HOWEVER, I know that someone is doing ANOTHER Whedon and comics essay anthology (Okay, yes, we both got the idea at the same conference.) And you or others reading this could submit your proposal to them. The CFP isn’t up yet so I don’t have all the details, but they’ve said they’ll post it in October, presumably to the Whedon Studies Association and Penn English. Plus I’ll post a link up here. Best of luck and thanks to everyone who expressed interest.

Sorry, a bit of clarification. I submitted a proposal back in August, but I have not heard from you about whether my proposal was accepted or not. Have you already made your decisions and notified the authors? Thanks for the clarification.